If your baby is 6 months or older but refuses to eat iron-fortified infant cereal, don’t worry. At that age, their tiny tummies can actually tolerate other foods like jarred baby food, or homemade baby food like pureed fruit, vegetables and meat.

If your baby doesn’t like cereal, try adding some slowcooked meat into a blender or food processor with a bit of the meat liquid and serve that to them. They’ll still receive iron from the meat, but the iron in vegetables isn’t absorbed as easily. They’ll need to eat a lot more veggies to get the same amount of iron in one serving of pureed meat.

It wasn’t until recently that we were told to feed our babies solids at 4 months of age. However, new recommendations state that we don’t need to start babies on solids until 6 months of age. Until then, formula or breastmilk provides all the nutrients that they need.

At 4 months, infant cereal would be all a little baby’s stomach could handle, but at 6 months, their digestive system is more developed and can digest more foods. That’s good news for you if they don’t like that yucky cereal.